Speed run of Alex Kidd in Miracle World's European version, done on December 6 2005. Available in five versions: low/normal quality DivX, and normal/high/low quality H.264 MPEG-4.

Author's comments:
First of all, I have to say thanks to a few people. #endgame on the SDA forum for giving some great tips, Nate for capturing the run and Radix for uploading it.

Alex Kidd was the Mario of Sega before Sonic came into the picture. Alex Kidd in Miracle World, released in november 1986. The game had a lot of attention in the late 80's/early 90's and was build-in in a lot of Master System consoles. Nowadays the game is still being called 1 of the best, if not the best SMS game there's ever been made. The diversity of the game, with a helicopter, bike, boat and the well-known rock-scissors-paper minigame make it a great game to play and speedrun.

The design of the Master System controller is shit, very shit. There is no pause/start button on it, it's located on the console itself. The pause button is needed in some occasions in this game to use certain items such as the power bracelet and invincibility powder, so I had to slam the console a few times in order to equip myself :D.

I didn't know what time to aim for until I found out somebody had ran this game before. The time of Rodrigo Lopes is 16:32 played on NTSC or PAL-M. I knew I had to go for a sub 19 on PAL to beat his time. With the use of FreezeSMS, a Sega Master System emulator, I managed to get better at individual levels by using the save and load options. I found loads of tricks, of which most of them (but certainly not all) are included in the run, resulting in a sub 18 time! Some of the tricks have a very high risk factor, so I didn't include those. I also found a few new tricks after the run. These are the cumulative times (on tape):

• Level 1 - Mt. Eternal (0:40)
  The first level goes well, but has a few sloppy moments in which my punches miss. The water part goes very well and I manage to get $200, which is needed for the second stage. In the perfect run stage 1 could be done 1 second faster.
  
  
• Level 2 - Stage 2 (2:00)
  Easy map, flawless.
  
  
• Level 3 - Lake Fathom (2:25)
  Another flawless map.
  
  
• Level 4 - Island of St. Nurari (2:55)
  Again without any problems.
  
  
• Level 5 - Stage 5 (3:16)
  This map goes perfectly. I could crash into the red blocks a tad bit earlier perhaps, but it's hard to determine how much money you have. It doesn't make a difference anyway.
  
  
• Level 6 - Village of Namui (4:11)
  The first part with the heli goes well. But after I crash I make some sloppy moves in my jumps. Overall it could be done a second faster.
  
  
• Level 7 - Mt. Kave (5:26)
  This is a pretty hard map to do flawless, and so I didn't. The map can be done a second faster then I did.
  
  
• Level 8 - Blakwoods (5:59)
  Perfect.
  
  
• Level 9 - Stage 9 (6:22)
  No problems.
  
  
• Level 10 - Bingoo Low land (8:04)
  Well, this map goes flawless. But there is a trick at the end where you can crash your heli in the last cloud (against the left side of it). Alex will fall out the heli and you can walk to the end. This saves about 2 seconds I think.
  
  
• Level 11 - Radaxian Castle (9:58)
  A hard map, but well executed.
  
  
• Level 12 - City of Radaxian (11:03)
  Good run.
  
  
• Level 13 - Stage 13 (11:38)
  About 3 seconds can be saved here by trying to fly up to kill the last bird, you need to be very fast though! It's a trick with a high risk factor, alotta chance this goes wrong.
  
  
• Level 14 - Kingdom of Nibana (11:50)
  Ummm...not much to say here :P.
  
  
• Level 15 - Stage 15 (13:18)
  Great run.
  
  
• Level 16 - Janken's Castle (17:03)
  The hardest and longest map in the game. Like always I make some errors here, but it really isn't that much. In a toolassisted speedrun it could be done 5 seconds faster perhaps.
  
  
• Level 17 - Cragg Lake (17:37)
  No problems here. Finished!

Especially map 10, 13, 16 have room for improvement. Map 1, 6 and 7 are sloppy at some points, but I don't loose too much time.

For a single segment run this is a run I'm very proud of. I hope people feel inspired by this run and try to beat it. Perhaps I will try to beat it myself in the future as I feel a sub 17:30 is in range. But for now, have fun people!

For any suggestions, questions, comments or new tricks (I'd love to hear of new routes and tricks), mail me at tumpke AT hotmail DOT com

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